Schools hit by sexting epidemic

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More than a third of all sexting cases involved children aged 12 and 13Getty Images

Alexi Mostrous and Elizabeth Rigby

Last updated at 12:01AM, March 12 2016

Britain is suffering from a sexting crisis with tens of thousands of
schoolchildren caught sharing sexual imagery online in the past three years,
an investigation by The Times has found.

Politicians and child-protection groups called for mandatory sex-education
classes after data from 50 of Britain’s biggest secondary schools showed
that more than a third of all sexting cases involved children aged 12 and
13.

Maria Miller, the former culture secretary who chairs the women and equalities
select committee, called on the government to introduce compulsory sex
education in schools to help to tackle the “appalling” effect sexting was
having on

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In a 40-hour search in 2013, analysts at the Internet Watch Foundation found 12,224 "self-generated" images of teenagers on 70 paedophilic websites (Alexi Mostrous writes).

Abusers search for open Instagram, Flickr, Imgur and Facebook accounts operated by a child or teenager. They then use search terms to find explicit photographs.

Once identified, they can "harvest" all the images posted.

Sexting pictures are particularly prone to theft because they are often passed around dozens of pupils in each school.

Alternatively, paedophiles befriend young people using fake social media identities before encouraging them to send explicit pictures.

They then use programmes to permanently capture any images sent, even from apps such as Snapchat which children believe will "disappear forever".

A recent Australian study found that paedophiles were also trawling through family photos posted on social media by parents, searching for terms including "kids at beach", "boys play in river" or "gymnasts".